Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/45

 CHAPTER III

was a bombshell with a vengeance. The anarchist, who threw it metaphorically, would have had no scruples—except those of personal apprehension—in casting a dynamite duplicate on the shearing floor. A sudden confusion filled the shed. Murmurs and sullen rejoinders were made, as the more prudent division of the men recognised that their shearing cheques, the outcome of weeks of hard work, were doomed to delay, perhaps to forfeiture. Some openly withstood the triumphant delegate, others, less impulsive, were disposed to temporise, while 'I thought this was a Union shed' remarked, with slow impressiveness, a gigantic native, considerably over six feet in height, whose wiry, muscular frame and tremendous reach stamped him as one of the 'ringers' of the shed. 'Ain't the Union Rules put up there?' pointing to the copy ostentatiously affixed at the end of the shed for reference. 'What's this darned foolishness, stoppin' men that's only a week's work between them and a big cheque?'

'You can read and write, I suppose,' replied Mr. Stoate contemptuously. ('Better nor you,' murmured a young fellow just within earshot.) 'Is them words on the telegram, what I told the men of this shed, and are you thereby ordered to come out, or are you not? That's what I want to know. Are you a-goin' to defy the Union? Think a bit afore you chance that and turn "scab.

'I'm goin' to think a bit—just so,—and I hope you other chaps'll do the same, and not rush into law, like a bull at a gate, and lose your money, because of any second riddle in the land. As to being a "scab," Delegate Stoate, I'm no more one than you are, perhaps not as much, if the truth's